I did so, in half a dozen lines, promising to write next day,
after a further attempt to discover his meaning, and begging him to
consider how completely in the dark I was as to him and his case. It was
well that I wrote that day. Long after, when he was letting me into all
the facts of his life, he told me that he had made my replying at once
or not the turning-point of his fate. If the post had brought him
nothing, he would have drowned himself in the Liffey.
My second letter was the only sort of letter that it could be,--an
account of my own conjectures about him, and of my regret that I could
see no probability of my being of use to him, except in as far as my
experience of many troubles might enable me to speak suitably to him. I
added some few words on the dangers attending any sort of trouble, when
too keenly felt.
In answer to my first note came a few lines, telling me that the purpose
of his application was mainly answered, and that my reply was of
altogether greater consequence than I could have any idea of. He was
less unhappy now, and believed he should never be so desperately
wretched again. Wild as this might appear, I was still persuaded that he
was not insane.
By the next post came a rather bulky packet. It contained, besides a
letter from him, two or three old parchment documents, which showed that
Patrick's forefathers had filled some chief municipal offices in the
city in which the family had been settled for several generations.
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